National constituencies are a former feature of the Fijian electoral system. They were created as a compromise between demands for universal suffrage on a common voters' roll, and for a strictly communal franchise, with Parliamentary constituencies allocated on an ethnic basis and elected only by voters enrolled as members of specific ethnic groups. Demands for a common voters' roll were first raised by the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party in the early 1960s, but were resisted by leaders of the indigenous Fijian community, who feared that a common roll would favour Indo-Fijians, who were then in the majority.